Princess White Deer (Esther Louise Georgette Deer) | From Ziegfeld girl to Native American activist

Princess White Deer (Esther Louise Georgette Deer) 

The Original Princess White Deer, the Only Dancing American Indian Girl. Hamburg: Lith. Adolph Friedländer, ca. 1913 (no. 6044)

Color lithograph poster (37 x 27 1/2 in.; 938 x 698 mm). Fold creases with light abrasion and repaired separation, tiny losses at intersecting folds. Laid down on linen.

Esther Deer (1891–1992)was a member of the Mohawk people. She began performing in Wild West shows as a young girl at the beginning of the twentieth century, and as a teenager she toured the United States, Europe, and South Africa with the Famous Deer Brothers. Returning to the U.S. at the outbreak of World War I, Deer began performing as a solo act at war bond rallies. She became a Ziegfeld girl; performed with entertainers as varied as Will Rogers, Eddie Cantor, Houdini, W. C. Fields, and George Gershwin; appeared in four Broadway musicals; and starred in a 1925 play that she wrote, From Wigwam to White Lights. In addition to being a successful jazz dancer and singer, Deer was a spokesperson and activist for Native American causes, including the American Indian Defense Association.

This poster portrays Princess White Deer on a buffalo hide held aloft by an American eagle. She is incongruously wearing a Plains Indian war bonnet, the hide surrounded by popular totems that Friedländer's designers considered representative of Native American culture.

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, p. 225